Only six more weeks to go!! Holy moly. This week of training included the DC Ragnar Relay on Friday and Saturday. Luckily, my total mileage for Ragnar actually matched my planned mileage on my training plan for Friday and Saturday. So initially the only tweaking I planned was to forgo my 9 mile tempo run on Thursday (11 miles total with the warm up and cool down) and just do an 11 mile easy run, since I would be running my Ragnar legs at a quicker pace. However, things ended up needing to be tweaked more than that…. more on that in a second.

Monday- 5 mile easy run on the treadmill. I squeezed this run in between a full day of work and a 3 hour drive to Farmville (for work). These Monday easy runs never actually feel easy, since they are the day after my long run. After Sunday’s sixteen miler, my legs were definitely tired, but stretching after this run felt oh so good.

Tuesday- 4 x 1.5 miles with 800m recovery. 10 miles total with the warm up and cool down.

This run was done back on the High Bridge Trail Sate Park, and was my second strength workout of training. It went pretty well and intervals continue to be my favorite.

I was really pushed to squeeze this run in after work and before sundown. It actually started to get dark on my third interval, so I ended up running a bit fast during #3 and #4 because I was scared. I guess when you are truly scared it overrides any tiredness you may be feeling in your body 🙂

Goal: 15:12; Splits: 15:13 / 14:52 / 14:50 / 14:34 (running scared!)

Wednesday- Rest day. Drove back from Farmville.

Thursday- 6 mile easy run. I had a 9 mile tempo run (11 miles total), but with Ragnar relay that weekend I decided to change it to an 11 mile easy run. But then I woke up Thursday morning with a very stuffy nose, persistent headache, and ear infection-type pain. So I decided to down grade my run to 6 miles.

It drives me nuts to not follow my training plan, and to be lower on my weekly mileage than I was supposed to be. But I think it was the right call since I really wasn’t feeling well and was about to spend over 24 hours in a van running overnight. Up to this point training has gone well and I’ve been able to follow my training plan to a T. It would be unrealistic to expect everything to go perfect, so I guess this was one of my speed bumps along the way.

Friday- The first day of Ragnar! I’m going to do full recaps of each of my three Ragnar runs. My only run on Friday was a 4.5 mile run on rolling hills through rural Maryland. It was the ninth leg of the relay, and ended up being my fastest paced leg of the three I ran. The Hansons Method definitely went out the window Friday through Saturday.

Saturday- My first run on Saturday was at 3 in the morning and was roughly 6.7 miles through Maryland farmland. I was terrified to run through the pitch black by myself, but I got it done. Our team motto unofficially became “pull your balls out of your back pocket” and that’s what I did. Although I have to admit I was convinced the Children of the Corn were going to pop out and get me for about 75% of this run.

My second run on Saturday was in the early afternoon and was a quick 2.2 miles. It was hillier than I expected and my right lower leg had really started to bother me at this point. It was also raining during this run, but it was fun to run in the rain. I ran through an area of Alexandria and on the Custis Trail.

Sunday- 5 mile run on the W&OD Trail. On Saturday night we stayed up to watch the Virginia Tech game (which ended up not being worth it, boo) until 11 PM. That means I stayed up from 7:00 AM Friday until 11:00 PM on Saturday with only a 20 minute cat nap thrown in. So naturally I was very tired.

My run was supposed to be 10 miles long, but my right lower leg was hurting me even more, so I cut it short. I think I could have pushed through the tiredness, soreness, and stiffness from Ragnar, but not the pain in my leg. I have an easy 7 miler scheduled for today, but I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing yet.

**edited to add: Here’s a picture of the snake I nearly stepped on while running on the W&OD Trail. That’s two snakes in two consecutive weekends, people!

Total Miles: 39.4 (yes, I’m counting it to the tenths of a mile, because I was supposed to run 49 mile this week)